Just because they aren't free to play doesn't mean they don't have microtransactions. The pet/mount store has been getting some attention of late and one has to wonder if this whole new battle-pet system is an opportunity to increase the pet store profits significantly.

Hard to disagree with a working formula, and it also looks like their consistently improving this formula through thier other micro transactions stated above :|, Blizzard sure looks like it is in a good position right now

Just because they aren't free to play doesn't mean they don't have microtransactions. The pet/mount store has been getting some attention of late and one has to wonder if this whole new battle-pet system is an opportunity to increase the pet store profits significantly.

Agree, but must say that it must be one of the poorest stocked online-shops ever. They could make millions if they just add more content.

Everyone seems to forget the reason most of these games go free to play. WOW has a monopoly on the MMO genre. Most of the MMO folk play WOW, getting them away from WOW requires them to give games away for free. The trend is not making free-to-play games but making pay-to-play games, not making money and going F2P.

Yes it is ... but honestly speaking, you can't do much with that. Almost nothing in fact. And there are so many limitations at play. Basically they hope it gives people enough of a taste that they sign up and start paying.

But frankly speaking, they can't shift to a F2P model because WoW is probably their biggest constant money-spinner right now. I wouldn't be suprised if it generated more than half the company's annual revenue.

But given how things are moving, I'm thinking that the forced premium's model is on its way out the door - and EA and Star Wars might have jumped into the game a bit late - gamers have started to experience what f2p games actually can offer them and are probably going to wisen up a bit.

Yes it is ... but honestly speaking, you can't do much with that. Almost nothing in fact. And there are so many limitations at play. Basically they hope it gives people enough of a taste that they sign up and start paying.

Level 20 can be achieved within 2 hours, even by an inexperienced player.
Levelling itself only starts to suck up time at around level 50. Then it slows down a lot to 58-60 (Depending when you decide to go to Outlands). Outlands is ok, but not by a hell of a lot. Northrend levelling (68-78) is EXTREMELY fast, with Catclysm coming out rather average.

All in all, just in perspective - My recorded times for a new character shortly after Cataclysm release (all reported times in PLAYED time, limited to no resting exp):
1-60: -16 hours
60-70: +9 hours
70-80: +5 hours
80-85: -13 hours (I slacked bigtime here!)

Total /played reported time at reaching level 85: 1 days, 19 hours, 17 minutes, 48 seconds.
In real life lapsed time, this was done within one week. I think it was 5 or 6 days...

For blizz to go F2P... they would have to drag that time-frame out to ridiculous lengths for them to make any amount of real money, by keeping players in the leveling-stream for longer.